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Extendability in DesignLegatum Fellows Seminar Series

Jhonatan RotbergLecturer, MIT Engineering Systems DivisionFounder, Director, MIT NextLab Program

September 21, 2010

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The Millenary Problem of World Poverty

• Extreme poverty across the developing world – the lack of products and services that people need to survive on a daily

basis – crippling friction in all daily life: commerce, health, government, education

• Societies have attempted to solve this problem in very diverse ways, albeit unsuccessfully

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Humanity’s Attempts to Solve It

• Problem is so intractable, that societies have tried to solve it in great strides, mostly by creating top down socio-economic systems – those were all the tools we had historically; ideas, laws,

enforcement

• Small, bottom up innovations went largely unnoticed – highly localized (not applicable to other environments)– out the radar screen from the rest of humanity– not scalable in a massive way beyond immediate vicinity

• Recently, we’ve seen evidence that the new ubiquity of telecommunications has helped reduce this friction,thus denting the problem– by accident, organically, as part of

normal capitalist business practices

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A Substantiated Hope

• The scalability of ICTs, especially cellphones is helping usher the socio-economic development long sought through other, more grandiose means, according to the World Bank

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The Promise of Mobile

• Unparalleled adoption of mobile phones in the last 10 years – the fastest growth of a new technology in history

• Effect of Moore’s Law on handsets– lower costs, increased processing

• Growing footprint of mobile operators – areas of non-coverage are now scarce

• Behavioral acceptance of these devices – our phone is now our most prized personal item

• Ease of mobile app development – tools for easier app development, deployment

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Unprecedented Growth Worldwide

• Mobile phone adoption has surpassed 4.5 bn cellular connections in the world

• By year end 2011: 5 bn connections out of 6.8 bn de people on earth. About ¾ of all world population

Source: International Telecommunications Union

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Greatest Growth in the Developing World

• Demand to hear and be heard in the developing world the single greatest pent-up market force to come into the industry during the last ten years

Source: The Economist

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World Mobile GSM Coverage (Jan 2005)

Source: http://www.coveragemaps.com/gsmposter.htm

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World Mobile GSM Coverage (Jan 2006)

Source: http://www.coveragemaps.com/gsmposter.htm

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World Mobile GSM Coverage (Jan 2007)

Source: http://www.coveragemaps.com/gsmposter.htm

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World Mobile GSM Coverage (Jan 2008)

Source: http://www.coveragemaps.com/gsmposter.htm

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World Mobile GSM Coverage (Jan 2009)

Source: http://www.coveragemaps.com/gsmposter.htm

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History’s Trojan Horse

And it scales!

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Projects of the Next Billion Network

Does NOT scale!

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The Chasm Between Promise and Delivery

• No funding to get this revolution jump started – governments – NGOs– foundations

• Commercial companies – few invest LT in innovation for new markets – don’t see why they should fund stuff that they

pay taxes for the government to do

• Crossing the chasm between prototypes and implemented technologies – much more is needed than a prototype and boundless energy – real-world infrastructure and corporate goodwill, at a minimum – most projects never have the chance to scale and have real impact

• Chicken and egg problem – no market/deployments no funds/risk-takers

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The Need for a New Strategy

• Conclusion: our only chance is tapping self-interest of commercial companies – universal language: increasing revenues; decreasing costs– understand power of the technology– act faster, more effectively than governments, NGOs, foundations

• Problem: how to persuade them to fund projects that can jump start the cycle– not a one time shot – not only CSR or PR – see the value for the longer term– realize new BOP markets

• Design technologies that are as commercially useful to sponsors as they areto humanitarian causes inthe developing world

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Technologies that are Extendable

• Extendable is a technology provides value to a for-profit company, which can then be used for humanitarian ends without significant additional development

– its commercial value proposition is sufficient for funding its design and development by a for profit company

– addresses needs for a humanitarian cause, as stated by a specialized organization on-site, working with stakeholders on the ground

– architecture is essentially the same for both ends

– most changes are in UI, and others can be done without major effort

– ideally, it’s extendable through configuration, not coding

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Our First Approach

• Where can mobile tech add significant value givenits intrinsic characteristics of portability?– sales force – distribution networks – supply chain

• What humanitarian problems it could address? – lack of affordable products and services for daily sustenance due

to high costs, including promotion and distribution – medicine delivery in rural areas in Africa and elsewhere – coordination of humanitarian relief efforts in disaster areas

• Pitched the Extendability story to Estafeta– large logistics company in a large emerging market – value proposition is: reduce your costs of distribution

with smartphones that are cheaper and do more than your current devices

Logistics

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Questions for Extendability in Design

• Do we have a Business Case for the technology commercially, in sponsor’s own operations?

• How can it be ‘extended’ to one or more humanitarian scenarios?

• Do we have a road map of how to get to the commercial technology, and then to the humanitarian technology?

• Why do this with MIT and not with a software development firm?

• Who exactly are our humanitarian partners and are they really receptive to this?

• What is the value for sponsor’s involvement in humanitarian causes?– PR, branding– CSR– connections in the government– greater good will in its existing markets

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Three Way Collaboration

Academia Industry

Humanitarian Organization

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Delivered: Extendable Commercial App

• We now have the prototype of a mobile app that is extendable in any of our three humanitarian scenarios

a) Quick source of information Availability and cost of goods and services

b) Transactional platform For peer to peer exchange of value, data or presence of package

c) Logistics, distribution and promotion Coordination of stakeholders taking package from one point to another

Bar Code GPS TrackingCapture of POD Capture of Images

Unidirectional 128Bidirectional PDFRFID

SignaturePhoto Voice

ImageAudioVideo

CustomInteractiveAt No Cost

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Sync with Cloud based Platform

Individual(voice + data)

Market/Private(data)

System Enabling(data + process)

Source: E. Blanco

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Alliances with Local Institutions for Humanitarian

• We’ve made alliances to learn the detailsof humanitarian relief operations to launchthis for disaster management in Mexico

• We’ve offered sponsors branding in: – PR Campaign – Promotional Materials – Website of the project – In the mobile app

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The Challenge

• Identify commercial candidates that may benefit from an innovative mobile application – a company you know or want to contact – an industry you understand – a part of the operation you know can be improved with mobile

innovation

• Identify which humanitarian partner that commercial company would be interested in extending their technology to – similarity in the functioning of the technology– interest from top management in a given cause or organization – a potential vale, tangible (sales) or intangible (PR), in a current or

future market or government agency

• Ensure that the technology is indeed extendable, both functionally and technically, from one environment to another

• Ensure that your humanitarian partner will prove to be a reliable receiver and user of the technology

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We’ll Help You Succeed

• We will work closely with you to finalize your value proposition and proposal materials are solid enough to approach commercial enterprises

• We will structure and enable official MIT Research Consortia based on viable cases of mobile technologies that are Extendable

• We will structure a year-long NextLab program and will make this a case study at a NextLab class, in order to have a team working on your idea

• We will help you approach commercial companies to get your idea funded

• You’ll have full access to the NextLab Platform: a Development and Execution Environment for mobile apps

• We will leverage other NextLab assets

• We will give you a budget to get this started

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A Dedicated Academic Program at MIT

• NextLab’s objective is to address global challenges through the development of mobile platforms designed to scale through:

a) academia-corporate partnerships b) the creation of new open source initiatives c) the launch of for-profit ventures

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Program Facts

• Number of students taught in 3 years: 143

• Students from: MIT, Harvard, Tufts (US), ITESM (Mex), UWI (Trinidad)

• Number of projects engaged: 29

• Areas of human need that projects are focused in: – m-health, m-payments, m-jobs, m-education, m-commerce, m-

activism, m-logistics, and m-banking

• Listed/validated in 5 MIT departments: EECS, Sloan, MAS, HST, ESD

• 3 spinoffs in 3 years: Moca/SANA, IA4CP, Celedu, EmpleoListo & Dinube (with Dev Ventures) – more to come!

• NextLab is a featured course in MIT’s Open Courseware

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Geographical Reach of our Projects

Countries in which projects deployed: 12– Americas: Mexico, Colombia, USA, Brazil/Nicaragua, Ecuador– Asia: India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Philippines– Africa: Zambia, Malawi, Kenya

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MIT NextLab Program and Deployment Cycle